


things are gonna change so fast

by amurderof



Series: worth the fall [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, First Time, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, Modern Thedas, Slice of Life, maslow's hierarchy of needs tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:55:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5040250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderof/pseuds/amurderof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How do you like it cooked?" Bull says.</p><p>D’s expression clears and he looks thoughtful, raising one of his prettily painted black nails to his lips. “Hot, and red,” he says, like that’s not sort of terrifying.</p><p>Bull clears his throat. “Uh. And bloody?” And he’s not sure he wants to sort out if the grin that twists its way across D’s face when he replies with a breathy <i>yes</i> is D being a brat or being creepily sincere.<br/>**<br/>(Or, how to train [and subsequently be trained by] your dragon.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. physiology

**Author's Note:**

> let me tell you friends, all i wanted to write was kinky dragon sex and instead i wrote all of this. welp. _welp._

“Uh, I’ve got some lettuce in the fridge—,” Bull starts, and the look leveled at him is so quelling in its calm hostility that he forgets to barrel through the description of the cherry tomatoes and almonds he’s got too, in case D’s feeling fancy.

“Salad,” D sniffs, like Bull's suggested he wear one of Bull’s normal shirts while they work on getting him more clothes. Maybe. Just consider it, perhaps.

(So Bull... tried that, the second day he woke up to D sleeping uncomfortably on his couch, and D had given him such a stink eye that Bull's grateful he can't have nightmares.)

Bull rubs his thumb across his forehead and cocks a brow. "Not a big fan of leafy greens?"

"I prefer meat," D replies promptly, and Bull can see him trying to do his Big Impressive Ancient Being schtick, but it falls short when he's wearing rumpled robes and hasn't had a chance to do is face.

He looks sort of like an angry kitten. An angry wet kitten.

"How do you like it cooked?" Bull says, instead of the fucking oodles of shit he could say instead — it'd be almost too easy to make a joke there. But there's also the possibility about D taking that and turning it into an actual comment on eating Bull, actually really doing it, and that stops being funny right around where it starts.

D’s expression clears and he looks thoughtful, raising one of his prettily painted black nails to his lips. “Hot, and red,” he says, like that’s not sort of terrifying.

Bull clears his throat. “Uh. And bloody?” And he’s not sure he wants to sort out if the grin that twists its way across D’s face when he replies with a breathy _yes_ is D being a brat or being creepily sincere.

 

==

 

“I’m craving curry. You coming?”

D turns his head towards Bull, slowly, away from where he’s been staring out the window. His feet are curled around the edge of the cushion, one hand hooked around his shins and the other propped propping up his chin, his elbow resting on the arm of the couch. He’s wearing these dark blue pajama things Bull found for him in Vintown that pull tight at his joints and then gauzily pool around the rest of him.

(Bull had brought ‘em back and chuckled when D hissed that they weren’t _pajamas_ , _Detective Hissrad,_ but that they’d do… And then he’d gone sort of quiet, and said _thank you_ in a small voice, and Bull had had trouble finding his own voice for a couple weighted seconds, so he could say _don’t mention it_.)

“...Yes,” D decides, and he unfolds himself from the couch and disappears into the bathroom. He comes out 15 minutes later — Bull’s stomach is fucking _eating itself_ — and even without all the fancy facepaint shit he must’ve had at the shop, he still manages to make himself look pretty as a rose.

(Bull blew $50 on what Lace assured him was fairly high-quality department store makeup, and while D turned his nose up at the plastic bag Bull had shoved at him, he could still work magic with it apparently. Not too good for the basic crap if the alternative was _nothing_.)

He’s halfway out the door ahead of Bull when Bull mutters a _wait up_ at him, and passes over one of his better-looking jackets. D takes it with a bemused look on his face, holding the suede jacket in both of his hands like he’s never seen one before.

“Sun’s down,” Bull says by way of explanation, and grabs the ratty flannel he wears whenever he doesn’t mind Skinner calling him a _bûcheron_. “The wind comes in off the water and gets under your skin.”

“Of course,” D agrees, and wraps the jacket around his shoulders likes it’s a cape… which, given how much it dwarfs his frame, isn’t an unreasonable way to wear it. Plus, he’s probably missing all his pretty cloaks and shit. Bull wonders, with Soulsday coming up, if any of the pop-up costume stores will have anything cape-like that’s worth the price of purchase. He can keep his eyes open for one, if nothing else.

Bull heads towards the subway once they’re on the street, and D hesitates before following him. It’s just as weird as Bull thought it’d be, seeing him out in the rush of people, and based on D’s expression alone Bull guesses D agrees. But D keeps on trucking, weathering the indignities of getting brushed up against hustling bodies, dickbags who’ve got some place to be and who aren’t interested in dealing with the careful steps D’s taking around the puddling water on the sidewalk, even if Bull’s certain his boots have gotta be waterproofed.

(He’d had his pair of thin slippers, and Bull couldn’t see the soles of ‘em lasting too long outside of the well-carpeted floors of his shop. But he also couldn’t look at D’s feet and know what size he wore — and something about asking seemed bizarrely intimate. Not that it mattered in the end, given how Bull let the EmpEx delivery guy into the building and signed for a honking big but light package, and watched D’s quietly delighted expression when he unboxed a pair of supple black leather boots. _She shouldn’t have…_ is all Bull’d gotten outta D about where they’d come from.)

“C’mon,” Bull prompts, and when his voice is lost on the wind rolling in from the bay and D keeps heading down the street, he darts his hand out and loops their arms together, tugging D close to his side.

D’s cheeks and nose and ears are chill-bitten and blush-pink, and while his eyes widen when he glances down at Bull’s hold on him, he keeps any comments to himself. Bull doesn’t say anything either. He keeps his arm around D’s on the escalator down to the platform, and D presses up against his side and breathes something about _qunari body heat_.

 

==

 

“Oh, no, no,” the street vendor tells Bull in his heavily accented trade, waving his hand frantically over Bull’s wallet as Bull tries to fish out a ten to pay him with. “It’s on the house.”

Bull’s not often surprised, it’s an important part about being a cop, and even more important given his uh, roommate situation, so it’s like a double whammy, the sudden uncertainty of what to do when the vint refuses his money and the _feeling_ of that in the first place.

“Uh, sure?” Bull closes his wallet slowly, and as the vendor’s finishing up his order of kebabs Bull notices the cage hanging from the cart’s umbrella frame. Inside’s this tiny monkey, maybe half the size of Bull’s hand, and it’s watching Bull with the kind of fascination he normally gets from rich kids.

When the vendor plates the kebabs and is ladeling out the rice, the monkey’s little paw darts out between the cage bars and grabs the vendor’s shirt by the collar. The vendor pauses and glances at it, and then smiles. The monkey’s paw recedes, and the man ducks to pull something out from underneath the cart.

“For _benevolus draco_ ,” the vendor says kindly, and before Bull shovels his — yeah, fucking _delicious_ — lunch into his mouth, he makes sure to place the box of anise cookies on the car floor, in front of the passenger seat, so they’ll keep until he gets ‘em home to D.


	2. safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then it’s D, in a cop dive bar, wearing his formal pajamas and Bull’s too-big jacket.
> 
> Bull stumbles through the introductions — “This is my, uh, D?” — and D listens to everybody shoot the shit for a while, and when a lull comes in the conversation immediately after the waitress leaves the table for another round of drinks, D proceeds to grill everyone about the crime rate of the neighborhood Bull chooses to live in.
> 
> After, no shit, ten minutes of D sincerely discussing neighborhood safety, Bull leans back in his chair and rubs his thumb across his forehead. “There a lecture in my future?”
> 
> “The choices you make,” D sniffs, “are punishment enough,” and there’s a brief breath of silence followed by the boys losing their shit.
> 
> (And D seems surprised they’re not laughing at him, but with him — and fuck, Bull can’t look away from his bemused expression, how it blends seamlessly into a pleased smirk after a couple seconds.)

Bull hears D sometimes, at night. He doesn't want to pry, or turn this into some kind of freakshow peepshow, but his apartment's small and there's not a lot of space for sound to travel, to get muddled between the rooms.

He hears him loud and clear, the way D's breathing speeds up, the way D wakes with half a shout strangled in his throat. It's not an always kind of thing, and in the days... shit, the weeks since D's shared Bull's space, it's happened less and less.

Bull guesses it'll take a fuckuva long time for D to be over holding his frigging dad's head in his lap, though.

In daylight hours D sticks to the apartment, unless Bull’s got some place to invite him to, like there's something about the outside that makes him nervous.

Bull thinks of when D lived in the pet shop, and how he never seemed to leave... but that was through choice more than anything else. Everything D needed he got delivered to him, and he had a whole world to explore throughout the building, using his weird magic.

Now he's got a shitty apartment in an okay part of town, a roommate who trades off the bed with him — and that'd been a surprise, after Bull offered D the bed, that D had only agreed if they traded off. _I do not wish to be an imposition_ , D had said after Bull'd told him it was his if he'd wanted it, that Bull had slept on absolute crap before and was used to it.

 _You've done much for me already, Detective_ , D had insisted, and gazed up at Bull with wide, uncertain eyes, and Bull'd swallowed hard and nodded, and muttered something about how D should call him by his name.

 

==

 

“Give him a call,” Krem says, apropos of fucking nothing, and Bull lifts a brow at him and pretends not to know what he’s talking about.

They’re halfway to Harold’s a couple blocks away from the station, autumn wind whipping across everybody’s faces and down the wide neck of Bull’s jacket, and somehow everyone still manages to hear Krem being a little shit.

“Ooh, _yes_ ,” Dalish agrees, sidling up next to Bull and hooking her arm through one of his. “Invite the magister.”

(And yeah, it’d been… weird, everybody finding out about D’s living situation. And really incredible gossip fodder, _apparently_ , with Rutherford taking time to descend amongst the rabble to ask Bull if he was _really_ dating the guy he’d thought was a murderer. Bull’d just stressed that it was, y’know _complicated_ , while glaring at Krem who was just frigging losing it at his desk. Skinner, who for some fucking reason was up in the bullpen too, nodded solemnly and stated, with her usual air of delighted dickbaggery: _U-Haul syndrome_.)

Bull heaves a put-upon sigh and fishes his phone outta his pocket. He knows when the boys have got an idea they won’t let go, and this is one by the stretch of Dalish’s smile alone.

He’d pointed out the landline to D a couple days in, because even though there’d been a phone in the shop, Bull wasn’t sure about how often he actually _used_ it. D had puffed up and declared he was in no way a technological naif — as much as, Bull’d thought, it’d go along with the rest of his aesthetic.

D picks up on the third ring, sounding breathless, like he’d forgotten what the ring meant and he’d run for it as soon as he’d remembered… and Bull carefully doesn’t think about what D breathing fast, his voice airy, does to his dick.

“Detective, if you have ruined my nails with this ill-timed—”

Which is cue for Bull to cut him off, because D can go for a while when he’s got a reason to complain. “The boys and me are going to Harold’s, and we thought it’d be uh, nice? For you to tag along. Wanna come?”

D’s silent, dead silent. Bull can’t even hear his breathing through the line anymore.

“Uh, well, _Krem_ thought—”

“Tell me the address,” D interrupts, and as stupid an idea as Bull thought it was to start with, he still has a hard time getting the words out around the smile stretching his face.

“There’s a subway map on the corner of—”

“I’m not a child,” D says archly, and hangs up on Bull the second he’s repeated the address for him.

Bull isn’t sure the conversation even happened for the rest of the walk to the bar, and definitely not for the 15 minutes it takes for D to show up once they’ve arrived.

And then it’s D, in a cop dive bar, wearing his formal pajamas and Bull’s too-big jacket.

Bull stumbles through the introductions — “This is my, uh, D?” — and D listens to everybody shoot the shit for a while, and when a lull comes in the conversation immediately after the waitress leaves the table for another round of drinks, D proceeds to grill everyone about the crime rate of the neighborhood Bull chooses to live in.

After, no shit, ten minutes of D sincerely discussing neighborhood safety, Bull leans back in his chair and rubs his thumb across his forehead. “There a lecture in my future?”

“The choices you make,” D sniffs, “are punishment enough,” and there’s a brief breath of silence followed by the boys losing their shit.

(And D seems surprised they’re not laughing _at_ him, but _with_ him — and fuck, Bull can’t look away from his bemused expression, how it blends seamlessly into a pleased smirk after a couple seconds.)

 

==

 

Bull has no idea what D gets up to when he’s at work.

He’d shown D the shitty old laptop he kept in the apartment, but D had turned his nose up at it and huffed something about _keys ruining his nails_ , which was too specific to be anything but from experience. He’d pointed out the TV and left D a metro card too, and D had thanked him and waved a hand as though trying to flit Bull away like a bug, so he could return to his reading.

When Bull comes back though, sometimes D isn’t there. It freaks him out the first time — until he remembers D’s a fucking _dragon_ or something, and can definitely hold his own against anything this piece of shit apartment complex could throw at him — but the third, fourth, fifth times, Bull wants to know where D’s _going_.

He feels stupid as fuck when he figures it out — D’s leaving the apartment to go _next door_ , to hang out with Mrs Raleigh, _apparently_. The two of them talk — well, Mrs Raleigh gossips, more like, and D probably nods encouragingly when she pauses to sip… and Bull wonders if D is _lonely_.

Feels pretty expressly shitty about that.

D closes his hand over Bull’s arm one night, after Bull asks him if he’s doing okay. Tells him that he’d heard her crying one day and felt prompted to seek her out and inquire if she were all right.

Bull can’t help but stare as D describes his shepherding her around her apartment to find her the slippers she’d misplaced, and the both of them sitting down to tea. He’d not intended to rile her further, but her tea selection was genuinely _abysmal, Detective Hissrad_ , and he had been doing her a favor in enlightening her to such.

Only once the words had left his mouth, she’d stared at him for several overlong moments — _why humans must make things so unreasonably uncomfortable I’ll never understand_ — before she’d finally laughed at him.

“Laughed!” D repeats, pursing his lips.

Bull can’t keep his own grin off his face, even when D glares at him.

“Yes, Detective Hissrad, much like that, you frustrating man.”

“At least I’m not human?” Bull says, and he heads into the kitchen to make himself some of his own damn tea because now he’s craving it.

“Yes, that is one of your few redeeming traits,” D snipes, and then says with, shit, what Bull would call a fond tone if pressed, “I’ve provided Mrs Raleigh with tea of a higher quality, and kept some for myself. You can find it on the bottom shelf of the cupboard to the left of the stove.

“There a _please_ in there?” Bull calls back, and he swallows back a laugh when he hears D’s exasperated huff.

“Yes, _please_ , magnanimous Detective Hissrad, would you kindly make me tea?”

“Got it,” Bull replies, and has to keep himself from whistling while he sets out their mugs — a huge thing he got in a tourist shop on the beach for himself, and this dainty china cup Lace found at an antique store in Vintown that she made Bull take home for D.

D’s got his own mug. He’s made a friend, even if it’s Mrs Raleigh of all people. He has his own tea which he keeps above the stove.

Bull grins the entire time the water boils.

 

==

 

Bull feels… heavy. Like he’s covered in thick blankets — or wet wool, wet newspaper, cotton in his ears. Like he’s wearing glasses and somebody’s smeared vaseline over the lenses.

D’s there, which is nice. He looks handsome, all blurry and backlit by the lights from the hallway. It’s not his best look though, surrounded by white. Makes him look paler.

Bull’s voice is scratchy when he speaks. “How’d you even get here?”

He’s not sure he gets the words out, until D says, “I’m apparently your _emergency contact_.” His face is all twisted up like he’s pissed, but his eyes are too wide for that. Shit, his eyes are pretty.

“Your eyes are _pretty_ ,” Bull says, and he tries to lift one of his hands so he can touch D’s face, because it’s important D knows, but the blankets are so fucking heavy Bull can’t move through ‘em. Past ‘em. He’s just stuck.

“Yes, obviously,” D huffs, and he folds his arms over his chest like he’s cold. The room’s so white. Like — fuck, like snow. Maybe it snowed. Somebody should get Bull a blanket that’s not so fucking wet if it’s cold.

“I’ll freeze to death,” Bull says, and D — laughs, but it’s not the laugh Bull likes. It’s not the laugh Bull always tries to get him to make. It sounds old and kind of tired. It sounds like it hurt.

“I will most assuredly set you aflame due to your lack of comprehension regarding the inherent danger of criminals and firearms before you have the chance to do so.”

“Aw.” Bull closes his eyes. D always uses big words and long sentences when he’s upset. “You’re sweet. Gonna... spoil me.” Weird thing about the heaviness is it’s not cold like he would’ve thought it’d be. It’s warm. It’s warm and heavy, and he only half-hears what D says when he talks again:

“...take care of this. And you, you great fool.”

 

==

 

The pain’s manageable, as long as he doesn't move too much. The bullet the tweaker got off went right through him, the doc says, and they’ve nipped any infections in the bud. He’s pumped full of drugs, and the hospital seems to actually know what they’re doing when it comes to qunari metabolism and resistances. He’s doing fine.

What’s eventually gonna be his downfall is the way D hovers, like he doesn’t have anything better to do. Which… shit, he probably _doesn’t_.

Bull asks for a phone so he can get Krem to drag D back into the real world and outta the gloom, and D looks actually physically peeved at the request.

“I do not need to be _distracted_ , Detective Hissrad.”

“You sure as fuck shouldn’t be wasting your time here.”

And then D’s looking at him like he’s lost his mind. Bull’s not sober enough for that look. He should be capitalizing on the nice crap flowing through the IV into his arm. “Listen, it’s just — you don’t _have_ to be here, y’know? Hospitals are boring. _I’m_ bored, and I’m high as fuck right now.”

“No one is forcing me to stay here, Detective,” D snipes, and he resettles back into his chair as though it’s not a miserable upholstery nightmare. “I’ve friends in significantly high places, and even were I unable to extricate myself through my own strength and willpower, they could do so if I so required it.”

It takes Bull a couple seconds to work through that mass of words, and he huffs a laugh. “So you’re sticking around with me?”

“For good reason,” D snaps, his voice sounding… strained. Wound tight. Kind of painful. “If this is what befalls you when you’re left to your own devices—”

“You heard the doc, yeah? I'm fine."

D's skin is as pale as Bull's ever seen it, like he hasn't seen the sun in decades, like the blood's been drained outta him.

"Yes, I can see that," D replies, but he doesn't sound half as pissy as he normally would. He sounds almost... relieved, beneath the sharp tone. It kind of ruins D's frigid weirdo image that he's sitting beside the hospital bed, and Bull can't see it but he feels... he feels fingers, cool and calfskin soft, pressing up against his own where they lie on the rough sheets.

D's probably never touched a piece of cotton so cheap.

"You don't have to stay here."

"Yes, you've made your desire to drive me away quite clear."

And D... shit. Bull breathes in slow, because it hurts like almighty fuck to do anything else, and because it helps him stay cool when D curls his fingers around Bull's and holds tight.

"Sounds like me," Bull says, and D hums, and doesn't let go.

 

==

 

Things have never been _normal_  between him and D, so it's not like Bull can say things get weird when he gets back to the apartment. D's kind of made a mess of things, as much as possible — there are dishes left on the coffee table, and his bed's not made. It's nothing Bull can't take care of once he's back to right.

The problem is that D listened to every single thing the doctor said and is damned convinced he's gonna make Bull abide by all of it, even the bullshit like what he should eat while he's recovering.

"C'mon, just hand me the phone, I'll get meat lovers, you can have half of it."

The glare D sets on him could curdle milk. "Do not try and bribe me, Detective Hissrad. I don't look kindly upon it."

"I don't look kindly upon you babysitting me," Bull mutters once D's out of earshot, hopefully — but when D comes back with a tray and frigging oatmeal and a banana, Bull's not sure if D's just following orders or punishing him.

It's like that, the rest of the first day Bull's home, and the second day. Third day in and Bull's feeling stir crazy like nothing else, and the fourth time he tries to get out of bed to, shit, go and grab a newspaper, _something_ , D stands at the end of the bed once Bull's been forcibly returned to it and looks at the spot on the wall directly to the right of Bull's head.

“I cannot be as cavalier about this as you.”

His voice is brittle, fragile, like Bull could break D if he weren’t careful, which should be hilarious given Bull’s current state but… yeah, makes sense. D’s not _fragile_ , but he’s. Sort of squishy. Emotionally-speaking, if you were to compare it to how Bull’s well. Squishy, in the physical sense.

“I’m gonna be fine,” Bull starts, and D looks straight at him like he’s about to set him on fire with his mind. “I _will_ be,” Bull stresses, because that part’s true even if D doesn’t want to hear it, and D huffs and crosses his arms.

“I’m not a child, unaware of how the world works. I understand that you will be fine.”

They sit there in silence for a while, because if Bull’s learned anything about D it’s that sometimes he needs time to sort out what’s going on in his head — or sometimes the only way to get him to explore something he doesn’t want to is make it awkward.

D eventually cracks, like Bull knew he would, and tosses his hair. When he speaks again though, Bull realizes he maybe didn’t know what he was opening up:

“Your life is finite, Detective Hissrad. Do you understand what that means to me?”

“Yeah, I’ve got an understanding of word definitions.”

D’s glare could curdle milk. “I will outlive you by ages,” he says, and his voice cracks on the last word; and it's like D has electrified the room, even though — fuck, even though Bull's never actually seen him use an ounce of the magic he's gotta have. Because that's... listen, they've been sharing the same space for a while, and it's a shitty space but it's not terrible, and D rarely complains about it anymore beyond a baleful stare that speaks volumes. But it's not like they've actually talked, uh, about things. Any of the things they probably should've. It's a small space. If something goes to shit, what're they supposed to do? And — fuck, if Bull pisses D off or vice versa, what's D supposed to do? Bull's not stupid enough to think D couldn't take care of himself, but…

“Please do not shorten what time you have.”

And what do you even say to that?

“It’s a hazard of the job, D,” Bull finally gets out, and he knows it’s a shitty answer once it’s halfway past his lips, and he doesn’t need to see the way D’s face tightens to know it. “You, uh.”

D swallows, and he sits down on the end of the mattress, one knee bent so he can turn to the side, look down across Bull easily. His holds one of his hands above Bull’s feet, hesitating, before he drops it, curving his fingers around one of Bull’s ankles.

“You joining the ranks of the handful of people who care if I get whacked?”

D’s grip on Bull’s ankle goes _tight_ , and Bull lets out a low grunt that D just straight-up ignores.

“Do not _joke_ ,” D hisses, and for one pants-shitting moment Bull thinks he sees D’s eyes flash red. “You have positioned yourself to be one of the only things I have some trace of affection for, and I will not have you taken from me prematurely.”

Which is — really fucking true. Fuck, where would D even live if Bull was outta the picture? Would one of his adoring fans take him in? Krem and Lace could let him squat on their couch for a while, at least. Bull bets D’d like crashing with them fuckuva lot more than staying in this little corner of squalor — Bull’s been in their apartment. It’s _nice_.

“And who’d give you shit if I weren’t there, huh?” Which is another joke, which Bull only realizes once it’s outta his mouth.

But instead of getting pissed, D seems to fold in on himself, and his face is blotchy and red when he snaps, voice thick, “No one, you frustrating man.”

"That's not." Bull clears his throat. The vibration shoots down his chest and he's closing his eyes against the burst of pain in his side. He takes a shallow breath and tries again: "Who sent you the boots?"

The corner of D's mouth twists up for just a second, and then he's holding a hand to his chin. Looks far away, like his head's in the clouds. "No one I could return to. I believe she's made that very apparent."

Which is just the normal amount of mumbo jumbo bullshit Bull expects from D, all things considered — even if Bull knows who D’s talking about, in the back of his head, through the haze of painkillers. She’d take him in. She’d take either of them in, Bull’s pretty damn certain. Not that D looks like he’s interested in hearing it.

"Krem's got a comfy couch," Bull tries again.

D frowns and drops his hand to his side. "I would not request such a thing from Cremisius."

“Yeah, but you _could_ ,” Bull responds firmly, and D looks a little spooked at Bull’s certainty, his eyes gone wide again.

Not that he says anything. Seems to think it’s fine if he just keeps squeezing Bull’s ankle like he’s trying to give Bull significant bruising. Fine if he just stares down at Bull like eventually he’s going to get some kind of answer outta his expression.

But it’s so — shit, it’s so fucking important that D gets this. That he’s not alone in this frigging world, even if you remove Bull from the equation. “I’m just the jackass who annoyed you enough,” Bull says, and D’s hold on Bull’s ankle somehow tightens even _more_ , and he only lets up when Bull curses under his breath. “Hey, could you not add another broken bone to my laundry list of injuries?”

“I — you are maddening.”

“Yeah,” Bull agrees. Later, he’ll blame the happy drugs. In the moment though, he just knows he’s gotta… gotta convince D of _something_.

He raises his hand, fingers spread, and D glances between his face and his hand for what seems like whole ages, until finally he releases Bull’s ankle and stands. Walks slowly around the bed until he’s standing next to Bull, and his outstretched hand.

‘Course the fucker’s gotta make things as difficult as possible. Bull bends his elbow, ignores the burst of pain when he twists his hand to fumble at D’s.

D breathes in sharply, but he doesn’t pull away. It’s good.

“You got people who care about you, you weirdo,” Bull says, and D doesn’t duck his head quick enough that Bull misses the smile turning up the sides of his mouth.

D tightens his grip on Bull’s fingers, and Bull’s nice enough not to complain about his weirdo strength. “I could say the same to you, Detective Hissrad.”

 

==

 

Bull’s on desk duty when he finally gets back to work. It’s crappy, but it beats lying in bed all day, even  _with_ the prickliest attending nurse you could find in all of Thedas. He keeps his ear to the ground though, because he’ll be damned if he misses out on anything interesting because he’s shuffling papers — and that’s why he hears Skinner muttering something to Dalish about an animal attack.

Fuck, he’s straight-up _tuned in_ to that kind of bullshit, even with the lull in suspicious deaths due to D’s semi-retirement.

“Are you supposed to be telling me this?” Dalish asks with a lifted brow, her mouth curving into a bit of a smirk, because those two flirt in the absolute weirdest ways.

“And who cares? I wish every asshole who tried to kill a cop showed up in my office in bits,” Skinner replies. “Fucking brutal, _cher_ , whatever it was had _massive_ claws, left puncture wounds the length of my finger. Giant cat or something got to him.”

Bull’s frigging riveted. “Uh, like... a dragon?” And — shit, they turn as one towards him, Skinner’s eyes narrowing while Dalish’s widen.

The three of ‘em stare at each other across ten feet of open bullpen and then Dalish dissolves into laughter, shoving a hand over her face, and Skinner rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Hissrad, a fucking _dragon_.”

When Bull ambles into the apartment that night, favoring his still-healing side, he stops in front of the couch and looks down at D.

D blinks slowly up at him, and he smiles, a small thing, only recognizable because Bull knows what to look for.

“Uh. How’d you sleep last night?” Bull asks, and _then_ D’s smile stretches across his face until Bull can see his teeth.

D closes his book and sets it aside on the couch, and folds his hands on his lap. His eyes are dark, and Bull forces himself not to look at his fingernails, to see if there’s anything caught under their lengths.

“When I lay down to sleep, Bull, I felt completely at peace,” he eventually responds, and Bull lets the shiver that starts at the base of his skull wash over him.


	3. intimacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patricia doesn’t get a text back that night, but Bull remembers to fire something off the next day at lunch:
> 
> _Hey! I’m off the market babe. Hang out sometime tho?_
> 
> When he’s out with Rocky to grab coffee for the boys he gets her response:
> 
> _holy shit_
> 
> Which leaves him laughing all the way back to the station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so indulgent and schmoopy. i am unashamed.

“Should be your night for the bed finally, huh?”

D hesitates just in the bedroom door and frowns. “No,” he says, and then closes his eyes and breathes sharply out through his nose. “Yes, if we were to abide by the same unspoken rules we have since my arrival.”

Bull lifts an eyebrow and walks towards the door, pausing to look down at D. “So, y’wanna scooch so I can head to the couch?”

And that’s when D reaches out and wraps one of his ridiculously-strong hands around Bull’s wrist. The tips of his ears are bright red, and Bull has to swallow back any of the stupid shit he’s thinking — stuff he’d use on anyone else manhandling him in his own bedroom, but not to be fucking used on D.

It _is_ hot though, the strength he feels in those fingers.

“I don’t think you should leave.”

And there it is, D’s mother-henning coming back. Bull’s got maybe a week until they fully release him back to active duty, but that’s just for insurance, paperwork, bureaucracy bullshit. He’d roll out tomorrow if they’d let him.

“Hey, I’m fit, I’m in fighting form. I’m good. I can pass out on a couch for a night.”

D’s nails fucking gouge into his skin and he holds back a wince, because D’s shaking his head and pursing his lips and looking like he’s about to do something he doesn’t have the slightest idea...

It hits Bull just before D opens his mouth:

“You’re—”

“Lie with me, Bull.”

And Bull’s drawn up fucking short by that, by D’s quiet sincerity. By the frigging vice grip he’s got on Bulls arm. Shit, if he said no, would he even be able to get away? Not that he’d… shit.

His mouth runs on autopilot while his brain tries to reboot. “You, uh. I kind of take up the whole bed.”

Which of-fucking-course puts D on the defensive, Bull can _see_ him clam up, rolling his shoulders back and lifting his chin and pursing his lips. “If that’s a _no_ , Detective, all you had to say—”

“Nope,” Bull interrupts, and he covers D’s hand before D has a chance to pull it away. “You’ve gotta wait for me to catch up, before you start making decisions.”

D looks at him for a long moment before Bull feels him circle his fingers over the bone in Bull's wrist. Bull's mouth goes dry.

D's expression is carefully blank. "Then what _is_ your response?"

Bull reaches up with his free hand and scratches his thumb across his forehead. "Still don't know where you're gonna fit."

And D's silent for a second, before he ducks his head and laughs.

 

==

 

D fits up against his side, turns out, arm hesitantly placed at one side of Bull's waist until Bull grabs his hand and drags his arm fully across him.Bull still takes up most of the bed, so it's a cozy fit, but that's... shit, well, it's not _bad_. It's pretty damn good, D in one of his nightshirts — _not pajamas, Bull, I wouldn’t be caught_ dead _in pajamas_ — and Bull in his sweats. Bull'd thought for a sec, D standing next to the bed after the both of 'em had changed, that D'd have a problem with Bull not wearing a shirt. But he'd just hesitated for a bit, and looked Bull up and down in a way Bull tried not to let go to his head. Or his dick.

"You're very warm," D says, and Bull can feel the breath from the words against his skin.

 

==

 

So like everything between the two of ‘em, it becomes a thing. A sleeping thing. No euphemisms involved, just a lot of, well. Cuddling.

And it’s not like Bull’s not physically affectionate with people — him and the boys smack each other around, and he doesn’t _always_ give Krem hugs just to embarrass him.

But D’s not somebody you look at and think: shit, yeah, let’s cuddle. Mostly when you look at D, you think: you could eat me alive. And it doesn’t help that he’s fucking terrible at it, to start with, all pointy elbows and knees digging into Bull’s thigh, but after a week it’s like a switch is flipped and they _fit_.

It takes a little longer for Bull to get used to having somebody so up in his business when he’s sleeping though, and uh, _only_ that somebody. He gets a text from Patricia late on a Thursday and of fucking course D finds his phone before he does.

(Bull’s never told him the passcode, but apparently D’s mystical lizard powers extend to breaking into people’s cellphones. Ancient Tevinter just had a solution to everything.)

“Patricia misses you,” he says calmly, holding the phone in front of him as he stands at the foot of the bed.

Bull nearly chokes on the air he’s breathing in and drops the newspapers across his lap. “Come again?”

D arches a single brow and — fucking bastard — scrolls up through the conversation history. “ _Apparently_ , yes.”

Bull tosses the blankets off his legs and makes a grab for the phone, and D lets out a startled curse and disappears into the living room.

 

==

 

“I’ve never met Patricia,” D tells him later, laid out on top of the blankets and not at all out of breath from the chase, thumbing through the texts that Bull is in no way ashamed of... but still kind of antsy about D seeing for some reason.

(Bull’s never gonna try and grab something from him again. Fucker’s slippery.)

D hums and clacks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “No wonder they miss you. This is remarkably lurid, Detective Hissrad.”

Bull shifts between his feet at the foot of the bed, and huffs and rubs at the back of his head. “Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of distractions.”

D glances up from the screen long enough to shoot Bull a frigging _blinding_ smile, and Bull barks out a laugh — and, oh why the fuck not, launches onto the bed to grab his phone back.

Patricia doesn’t get a text back that night, but Bull remembers to fire something off the next day at lunch:

_Hey! I’m off the market babe. Hang out sometime tho?_

When he’s out with Rocky to grab coffee for the boys he gets her response:

_holy shit_

Which leaves him laughing all the way back to the station.

 

==

 

“A Soulsday party,” D reads from the flyer Bull’s brought home from work. Bull’s busy toeing off his shoes but he can fucking _hear_ the skepticism dripping from each word. “How quaint.”

“Rocky plans his costume for _months_ ,” Bull replies, and D scoffs and moves to fold himself up on the sofa.

“Soulsday was once solemn. A day for awestruck reflection on the power of the unknown.”

Bull snorts and heads into the kitchen to pour himself something to drink, if D’s not gone through all the cups and not run the dishwasher. “And then the Chantry co-opted it, yadda yadda, I’ve read history books too.” He finds a mug on top of the cupboards — secret stash, D’s too short to see up there — and gets milk, and heads back into the living room.

“People used to fear speaking Dumat’s name aloud,” D snipes, but Bull can see the beginnings of a smile curling up the edges of his mouth. “And now, I am told one can purchase a costume for ℜ25.99.”

“You in the market for a Soulsday costume?”

“Krem’s idea of a joke,” D says tartly, and holds the flyer out for Bull to collect. “The boy is lucky I find myself so fond of him.”

Bull grins, and grins harder when D narrows his eyes. “That mean you gonna wear it?”

D visibly recoils, face twisting into a grimace. “Merely touching the fabric would cause me to break out in an untreatable rash, Detective Hissrad.” And then he’s back to looking like a little shit again. “I wish to attend dressed as a police officer.”

Bull has to cover his mouth so he doesn’t spit milk all over the fucking floor.

 

==

 

D doesn’t go as a cop, but only because Bull’s uniform would make him look like a toddler, and he refuses to wear anything cheap enough that you could buy it at a costume store. He dresses fancy as shit though, and Bull has to bite his tongue to keep from asking if he decided on going as a sexy Tevinter.

“No,” he says, when Bull walks out of the bedroom in his own thrown-together costume.

“I think I’m cute,” Bull replies, and lets himself grin in the face of D’s petulant muttering, and roll his shoulders so the cheap (and glittery, _so fucking glittery_ ) dragon wings sort of flap on his back.

They arrive at Harold’s after a crowded subway ride that left D pressed up against Bull’s side — warm and tense at first, and then almost distractingly relaxed — and the wings of Bull’s costume looking worse for wear. D huffs at him and smooths them out along his back, and uncharacteristically doesn’t give him additional shit about it.

“He got ‘em from the _kids section_ ,” Krem tells D despairingly when they’re seated at their table, and the both of them share the most long-fucking-suffering look.

Bull pulls over two glasses and the pitcher of beer and pours him and D drinks. “I’m devastated to learn you’ve both got your panties in a twist about how I recognize and embrace the childlike joy that’s an important part of Soulsday.”

D sniffs and wraps his hands around his beer, his elbow bumping into Bull’s side. “If you had forewarned me that your idea of celebrating Funalis was to mock my ancestry, I would have insisted on carrying through with my original idea.” He drinks, and when Krem leans forward with the question half out his mouth, continues, “A police officer would have been incredibly appropriate.”

“You would’ve looked like a stripper,” Bull replies. And that’s an image. “A stripper who wasn’t any good at his job, ‘cuz he couldn’t afford to buy clothes that fit.”

Across the table Dalish, who’s done something funky with her tattoos so that they look all irridescent for the night, hooks her chin over Skinner’s shoulder and waggles her eyebrows at them. “I think he would’ve looked like he was doing his walk of shame.”

“No!” Lace presses a hand to her chestplate — her and Krem are matching chevaliers, and cute as fuck — and looks offended enough at the idea of anybody being ashamed for both herself _and_ D.

“Obviously not,” D agrees, and Bull feels him slide closer on the bench. “There would be no need to walk anywhere.”

There’s a beat of silence and then everybody’s laughing, like they think D just didn’t get the reference or something, or it’s all at Bull’s expense, but Bull stares at D and D fucking stares right back up at him.

 

==

 

Dalish returns to their table with two pitchers of beer and slams them down in the center, sloshing beer over the rims, and before anyone can get out a complaint she says, “Where’s Rocky?”

Krem snorts, and refills Lace’s glass before his own. “Him, Stitches, and Grim didn’t want to be here with us old marrieds, Rocky said.”

“Bastard,” Skinner says with what Bull _thinks_ is affection, and she lifts her beer to clink against Dalish’s.

“He’d better get pictures of whatever he’s spent the last ten months on,” Dalish adds, and next to Bull, D murmurs his assent.

Bull doesn’t think about how close D’s sitting to him, or how he’s been watching Dalish and Skinner, and Lace and Krem, like he’s trying to figure something out. Which is — an abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous claim to make, because if you catch Bull at any random moment in the middle of the day there’s at least a 30% likelihood he’s thinking about D in some capacity, and that’s not when D’s leeched up against Bull’s side.

“We’re, uh, the life of the party,” Bull says, and forces himself to breathe in slow when D’s hand curls around his arm.

 

==

 

“You need a glass of water.” Bull beelines for the kitchen as soon as they’re back in the apartment. His head’s sort of foggy: the good kind of tipsy, where you feel warm and drowsy and happy. (He’s not gonna think about the size of the tab that it took to get him here.)

D hums from the living room, and Bull can hear him shuffling around — actually shuffling, no delicate steps tonight. “I’m in no danger of waking compromised by drink.”

“You say that now,” Bull warns, and he follows D into the living room, a glass of water in each hand.

And then he stops and has to remind himself to breathe.

Neither of ‘em closed the curtains before they headed out, and D didn’t turn a light on when he came into the room, so the only light they’re getting is streaming in from the street, pale yellow and watery. Somehow it makes D look gorgeous anyway. Shit, D’s just gorgeous.

“Please set the glasses down, Detective Hissrad,” D says, and he lowers his head half a tick. His eyes are dark, and he’s fucking haloed in light.

Bull sets the glasses down.

D smiles, and threads his hands in front of him, like he’s. Like he’s nervous. “Come here, wouldn’t you.”

 

==

 

Bull closes the space between them, keeping his eye open when D’s flutter shut, lashes long and pretty against his brown-bronze skin. This close, Bull can see the orangey-gold eyeshadow smoothed over D’s eyelids, the careful, long strokes of black liner.

He lifts a hand to cradle the side of D’s face, and D breathes out long and low, and leans into the touch, the gold bangles hanging between the piercings on his nose and ear tinkling quietly. Bull draws his thumb, slow, over D’s cheek, and tips D’s chin up, just a bit, gently, until he can close the distance between them, until he can carefully bring their mouths together, D’s plush lips as soft as he’d imagined, when he couldn’t stop himself from doing it.

D breathes in sharply, and Bull can feel the tension even from his light cradle of D’s jaw — and he slides his free hand down to curve around D’s wrist. D only holds himself all tight for a second more before fucking melting against Bull, swaying into his space and pressing their mouths together tighter.

They kiss like that for a bit, careful and firm, and when Bull licks out, runs his tongue across the pout of D’s bottom lip, D’s eyes snap open. The look in ‘em, how wide his pupils are, how dark, goes straight to Bull’s dick.

D doesn’t say anything, but his hand withdraws from Bull’s grip, and he raises both at his sides and then hesitates, palms hovering over Bull’s arms. Bull stays still, doesn’t interrupt whatever D’s working himself through with another kiss — and he’s rewarded when D finally moves his hands to trail over Bull’s shoulders, up to rest at the back of Bull’s neck. If Bull were a betting man, he’d guess D chickened out before moving them up to Bull’s horns — the horns are a draw, what can he say — but they’re hot against his skull, and when Bull leans in to kiss D again, D curves his fingers and drags his nails across Bull’s skin.

Fuck _yeah_.

They kiss like that for what feels like hours, Bull carefully walking D through it, a slow slide of tongue, coaxing D’s into Bull’s mouth. “Oh, oh,” D moans, like kissing upright’s the most overwhelming thing he’s ever done, and Bull’s gotta control himself when that thought hits him like a freight train.

Fucking tragedy if that's true, nobody ever helping D feel this good.

Bull loops an arm around D's waist, setting his hand in the dip above D's ass, and D lets loose another little whimper like he's dying.

D is used to getting all the finest things in the world — he should've had this too. He should've had people lining up to treat him right.

Bull's not gonna take it too far though. He feels stupidly sophomoric about it, pulling back from D's spit-slick and swollen lips and drawing his thumb across 'em, making sure they don't go too far. Like it's their first date or something, or Bull's gotta get D home before curfew.

"Hey, sweetheart," Bull whispers, and D breathes in slow before his eyes flutter open, pupils shot wide.

D scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip and Bull follows the motion, and then D settles back down on his flat feet — shit, had he been on his toes the whole time? had Bull pulled him up? — and blinks slowly.

"Hello," he replies, voice quiet and creaking. He starts to draw his hands away but moves at a snail's pace, fingertips pressed against Bull's skin, like points of electricity.

"You doing good?" Bull circles his hand on D's back, and D shudders and nods too many times in a row.

"Yes, I. That was... that was lovely." D presses his cheek against Bull's palm, and then draws away. He touches his lips with the pads of his fingers. "Educational."

"Ooh, gonna call me Professor Hissrad?" Bull gets out before he thinks through it, and D's face goes through a cascade of different emotions before settling on annoyance, with just a twinge of delight in the eyes. Bull's seen that one before. It's one of his favorites.

"I could get fired for fraternization," he says seriously, and whereas he expects D to just get pissy, D stares at him blankly for several seconds before covering his mouth to stifle his _laugh_ , and Bull — shit — Bull feels himself fall deeper.

 

==

 

Bull loves kissing. He loves the anticipation of it, the heated glances before you get down to it, the way it's like you're magnetized, pulled together and held there for seconds, minutes, hours.

He's not had a chance to kiss for hours in a while. He's been with people, but it's never been a _thing_ — any kisses he gave or got were a step on the way to somewhere else. Not a lot of opportunity to make out for an hour on a bed without somebody getting blessedly impatient for a hand someplace else.

D's hands stay above the belt though. They clench and they scratch and they tear through the back of one of Bull's shirts one time, and D doesn't look the least bit embarrassed when they realize it later. He seems smug, mostly. Bull wants to make him _scream_.

But the kissing's... fuck, it's good. It makes D melt and it makes him tense up like a spring, and when Bull works his way down the side of his jaw, under his chin, along the line of his neck to the dip above his collarbone, D holds himself so tight he shakes with it. It's fucking beautiful, _he's_ fucking beautiful, and he never asks for anything else.

Bull's never had a thing for virgins, not like some people he's met — there's something to be said for two people who know what they're doing and are just sorting out the specifics together — but holy shit, does it go straight to his dick, D's surprise at what his body can do. At what Bull can do with their bodies together.

But he's not gonna rush it. He doesn't want to freak D out ever, or overwhelm him — hot as it might be, D on the verge of something he doesn't quite grasp, and what'd he feel when it hit him and washed over him.

He does give D the opportunity to try new things though. Opens up the possibility, waits to see if D takes it.

They figure out quick that D likes kneeling on either side of Bull's legs — a stretch, but a good one, the muscles in D's legs flexing all gorgeous where Bull sets his hands. D likes to hold Bull by the horns, and shit, Bull's always been hot for that. D likes it when Bull sucks on his tongue, and whimpers when Bull fucks his tongue into D's mouth. He likes it when Bull sucks bruises on the side of his neck, and Bull's caught him idly pressing his fingertips into them the following days, like he's savoring them.

Bull's got enough self-control that he can manage himself even when they've been getting hot and heavy for hours, but the first time he caught D messing with the bruises he’d had to excuse himself to jerk off in the bathroom.

"Bull," D breathes one morning, lips close to Bull's ear as they lay together in bed, and Bull grunts and opens his eyes. He catches a glimpse of bronze shoulder where D's pretty blue silk housecoat thing's slipped off, and then he's pushed onto his back and D's climbing on top of him, knees on either side of his waist.

"Good morning," Bull says, blinking lazily up at D, and D huffs a laugh and places his cool palms against Bull's chest.

"I woke up this morning and felt..." D starts, and then he hesitates, and lifts one of his hands to press against his stomach. The silk bunches up under the touch, as he circles his hand above where — shit. Above where Bull can see the faint outline of what's gotta be D's half-hard cock. "I'm not ignorant as to what.... It is only that it pales in comparison to how it feels when it is you who drives me to this state."

Bull chuckles, he can't help it, and takes that as a compliment. Good to know he's more enjoyable than morning wood. He lifts his hands from the bed and wraps them around either side of D's waist, bunching up some of the silk himself. "You know what it is, huh?"

"Biology is not beyond me," D snips, and Bull tries hard to keep staring at his face when D slides his hand lower, slowly, shit, so slowly, like he's trying to work himself up to it. "There was simply little point to indulging, before. If I ignored my body's urges, then they would go away."

"That doesn't sound any fun," Bull replies easily, and starts rubbing his thumbs in circles where they rest at D's hips.

D breathes in sharp, like Bull just doing that's enough to distract him, and then his hips jerk and Bull's attention's wrenched away from D's mouth back to the fabric collected at his waist. "Fun is subjective," D says, his voice breathy, low. "Most creatures derive little enjoyment from copulation. It serves a single purpose, and once that purpose is fulfilled, it is unnecessary."

D talking clinically about animal sex really shouldn't be attractive, but then he's started rolling his hips, just a couple inches, just the muscles in what Bull knows has gotta be a perfect ass flexing. Bull's gonna accept that sometimes, context is everything.

"Sex doesn't have to be necessary. It can be fun."

D nods, and Bull watches the knob in his throat bob as he swallows. "I would be amenable to such fun now."

Bull's mouth goes dry, and slides his hands forward, so his thumbs rest on either side of D's palm on his stomach. "That so?"

"Ye-es." D's eyes drift shut, his hand sliding lower on his stomach, and then — fuck. And then cupping his erection through his robe and — shit, probably those little silk panties Bull tries not to think about when he's doing the laundry.

"Tell me what else you're amenable to." Bull watches the flush work its way up from D's chest to his throat, to spread across his pretty cheeks. D's lips part and shudder when he breathes in, and Bull holds his hips still when he tries to buck forward into his own grip.

"I." D catches his breath, and looks down at Bull with wide eyes. "You," he says on a shaky exhale, and he drags his hand away from his erection to spread low across Bull's belly. "I am amenable to you."

Bull feels his dick literally leap with that line, and he holds back the laugh he wants to let loose so D doesn't think he's mocking him, doesn't think Bull's anything but fucking over the moons to hear him say something like that and mean it. "Okay, sweetheart," he says, and he finds the hem of D's robe with his fingers, slips his hands underneath so he can curve his hands around the inside of D's thighs.

"Oh." D blinks down at Bull and licks his tongue slowly over his bottom lip. "Yes. Yes, that is — quite, this is—"

Bull doesn't give him the time to get through that sentence, moving his hands up D's thighs until his thumbs are resting on either side of D's cock, _shit_ , he can feel the heat of him. D goes taut and tense in the sweetest way, holding his breath, staring into Bull's eyes. Bull doesn't even know what he's waiting for, but then D's mouth forms around _please_ and Bull swears under his breath and runs the back of his knuckles up D's dick.

"Oh," D whimpers, and he jerks forward once, his hand still on Bull's stomach. "Oh, _please_ ," he repeats, like he knows it streaks down Bull's spine like electricity, and Bull loops his hand around D and runs his thumb over the head of his dick.

"Lemme see you, sweetheart." Bull's own voice is rough, low in his chest, and D nods distractedly and unties the front of the robe with shaking hands. It parts to give Bull the view of his life, sweat-streaked brown skin and curling black hair, trailing down D's chest to the prettiest cock Bull's ever seen, heavy and hot in his hand.

"Shit, you're gorgeous," Bull whispers, twisting his grip around D to hear him frigging _mewl_ , and then going back to stroking the head with his thumb.

D breathes in long gulps of air, and he nods once, and looks down at Bull with narrowing eyes. "Obviously," he replies with just a bit of the attitude he normally exudes, and when Bull pumps his dick again he lets out a drawn-out laugh that's the hottest fucking thing he's done yet.

"Obviously," Bull agrees, and he works his other hand under D to press up against his balls, to hold his thumb against D's perineum and listen to him gasp.

" _Ob_ — oh." D tips his head back and rolls his hips forward, rocking his pretty red dick into Bull's grip. He's scratching short raised lines across Bull's stomach, and Bull's gonna wear those with pride until D does a new set.

Fuck, until he does a new set.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Bull says around a growl, and D digs his fingers into Bull’s skin and shakes apart above him.

 

==

 

Bull gets back to the apartment late one night, the warmth that a couple beers gives him flowing through his veins after a few hours with the boys at Harold’s. He hollers a hello at D, who unsurprisingly doesn't respond, and finds him standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom when he staggers in to relieve himself.

"Hey, sweetheart," he says, bussing the back of D's head with a kiss when he lumbers past him. "Wanna vacate, give a guy some privacy?"

D hums, and Bull actually looks at him, takes in the wide neck of D's shirt — actually a shirt, none of his delicate robes or pajamas. One of _Bull's_ shirts, he realizes. The one he got when they forced him to take a vacation and him and Krem and some of the boys flew to Antiva and lost a lot of money on slots and gained a lot of pounds from buffets. It's black with the words LOOSEST SLOTS IN TOWN emblazoned across the front in gold. (There's a slot machine in the O in SLOTS, blocking out the top part of the O. It's one of Bull's favorite pieces of bullshit in the world.)

"You're really rocking that," he tells D, who finishes primping in the mirror and rolls his lined eyes, and then turns towards Bull.

"Do you think so?" he asks with wide, innocent eyes, and as he's stepping out into the hallway he tugs at the bottom hem of the shirt and Bull's eyes are pulled to the marks he left on D's collarbones.

"Shut the door," he grouches, and D laughs and does.


	4. self-esteem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> D jolts as though he’s heard Bull for the first time, and then he _sniffs_ , like he’s got allergies, and glances at Bull before grabbing for one of the tissues on the back of the toilet. He wipes his nose. When he breathes out again, Bull can hear how labored it is, like he’s —
> 
> “Holy shit, you sick?”
> 
> D tosses the tissue directly into the sink and rounds on Bull, finally really looking at him, and Bull has to focus on what he’s saying and not how he’s saying it, his voice all stuffed and nasally. “You think this is _humorous_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "katy is this what you've been doing instead of your minibang" you know what

Qunari don’t fucking dream. Maybe Bull needs to get that embroidered on a tea cozy so D sees it every day and starts to, y’know, abide by that pretty damn firm law of nature.

So of course it’s — well, not _immediately_ apparent, but pretty-fucking-quickly apparent, that what’s happening isn’t a dream. Not in the southern sense of the word anyway. It’s definitely not reality, and Bull’s definitely still in bed somehow… but he’s also here, back in D’s shop, sitting on the sofa across from D.

He clears his throat, glancing around. The fox isn’t here. Neither is the cat thing. So D’s strange dream reconstruction isn’t going whole hog. “You come here often?”

D’s eyes crinkle with the smile he doesn’t let show on his mouth. He sips from one of his delicate china cups, and hums. “Yes. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you.”

“Home’s comforting,” Bull replies with a shrug, but that was the wrong thing to say — D’s expression goes blank. Shit.

He’s halfway to trying to figure out what to say to get D back to right when D shrugs one cloth-swathed shoulder — and that’s another thing. He’s not dressed up as fancy as Bull would’ve expected; just some carefully-wrapped linen, and a couple bits of jewelry. Aw fuck, maybe there’s something bigger going on. Maybe staying here for so long, something’s—

“This shop was not my home. It was part of my occupation. I do not miss it.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Bull says, when he should’ve fucking bit his tongue, but D doesn’t react bad to that — his face softens, even, as though he finds Bull quaint.

“I had purpose here. That’s all.”

When Bull wakes up D’s already awake, eyes open, head resting on his pillow a handful of inches away from him.

“Fuck’s sake, D,” Bull mutters, and drags a hand across his face.

D keeps still and silent, watching Bull like Bull’s some kind of fascinating.

Bull stares up at the ceiling and tries to figure out what he wants to say. He has no idea what he’s supposed to have taken from that little escapade, from what D basically _confessed_ , but he does know one thing: “If you wanna talk, do it to my face, not that — whatever that was.”

D finally moves on the other side of the bed, resettling himself until he’s looking up at the ceiling too. It’s quiet enough once he’s done that Bull can hear him breathing, slow, lips parted.

“I,” D starts, and then stops. Bull feels D’s knuckles knock against his own, and he catches D’s hand up in his, rubs his thumb across the inside of D’s wrist.

“I am not so pathetic as to need reassurance,” D finally gets out, and Bull thinks he’s probably trying to sound a lot more disinterested than he’s managing. And then his voice bends coy, soft and deep, “When I’m awake, I’d much rather spent time doing something I enjoy.”

Which is a clear deflection, but when D’s next move is to clamber across Bull’s waist and straddle him, nails raking across Bull’s chest, Bull lets it slide.

==

He’s not D’s fucking mother.

Krem hums something from his desk, and when Bull glances up at him, says, “You’ve got that look on your face.”

“Gonna have to give me more than that,” Bull replies, and looks back to the paperwork he’s finally gotten around to handling. Krem’s gonna ruin one of Bull’s favorite hours of the day, Bull can just feel it.

“Like you’re sorting out how best to coddle somebody.”

Bull blinks for a good fucking half a minute, before shuffling the top papers and arching his brows down at them. “That’s not a look somebody gets.”

“Tell that to your face.”

Bull huffs a sigh, and holds his coffee mug out, shaking it a couple times until Krem gets the idea and lets loose a massive groan and a slew of curses, but picks up the mug and heads to the kitchen anyway.

D’s an adult. Shit, D’s probably a thousand years old — he’s not a child, he doesn’t need coddling.

The instant he thinks it a voice in the back of his corrects him though, sounding frustratingly like Tama: _Age has little to do with one’s ability to handle change_.

D doesn’t need coddling, but if he thinks his only way to truly cope is to manipulate dreams, to spend hours in some kind of fucking emotional holodeck… Bull breathes out slow, and schools his expression into something less mockable as Krem comes back with his coffee.

==

D’s as normal as he can be after that, and Bull doesn’t dream of him in the shop anymore. Bull’s not stupid enough to think that means D’s worked through whatever he needs to — especially not when D’s usually awake and staring at Bull when he gets up in the morning.

Shit gets real when Bull comes home after a long shift and finds D standing in front of the mirror, looking over his reflection like it’s one of those magic eye books.

“You trying to summon something?”

D doesn’t even glare at him from the corner of his eye. His hands are wrapped tight enough around the sink that his knuckles have gone white.

“Y’know, like Old Hag Flemeth? Say her name three times and she’ll possess you. Or steal you away to the Fade?” Bull ducks his head enough to look D in the face. “I’ve heard it both ways.”

D jolts as though he’s heard Bull for the first time, and then he _sniffs_ , like he’s got allergies, and glances at Bull before grabbing for one of the tissues on the back of the toilet. He wipes his nose. When he breathes out again, Bull can hear how labored it is, like he’s —

“Holy shit, you sick?”

D tosses the tissue directly into the sink and rounds on Bull, finally really looking at him, and Bull has to focus on what he’s saying and not _how_ he’s saying it, his voice all stuffed and nasally. “You think this is _humorous_.”

Bull drags a hand across the back of his head and forces himself not to laugh. “Am I laughing?”

“You _want to_ ,” D snarls, and yeah, he’s got something there. But Bull’s not gonna be a dick about it — even if it’d be a riot to see somebody as put-together as D succumb to the common cold.

That draws Bull up short though. The common cold.

“You ever get sick before?”

D drags in a breath and pushes past Bull, making a beeline for the bedroom. “Tell me, Detective Hissrad — what do _you_ think?”

Bull’s not gonna walk into _that_ one, but he follows D anyway. D, really stressing the contrary aspects of his personality, stops just outside the closed door and rolls his shoulders back.

“Of course you’d see nothing wrong with the situation I find myself in.”

This ain’t no new song and dance. Soon as D had been pushed off that dream boat by Vita, there’s been this low-level frustration with his state of affairs. He’s gotten better with a lot of it — he’s comfortable leaving the apartment, doing his own thing. He’s made his own friends, even if the one he sees most often is Mrs Raleigh next door. Bull’s pretty convinced all they do is complain about him.

“Which one?”

D opens his mouth to let loose what’s gotta be an absolutely scathing response, except he sneezes mid-word. His expression twists into a blank sort of horror, and Bull’s gotta cover his mouth to keep the laugh in.

“‘Which one?’” D mimics, dropping his voice as low as he can manage. “You’ve no idea of how — _reduced_ this life is. _My_ life is, now.”

Bull shakes his head, letting loose a sigh. “You think — yeah, I’m not buying it. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Feeling—” Another sneeze interrupts D, and it’s no less funny but Bull’s dead sure D would do him in if he laughed. “I’m no longer the one thing I was supposed to be.”

Bull tries not to roll his eyes — stares up at the ceiling for a couple seconds instead, like the Maker’s gonna poke his head outta the Fade and give him a break. This bullshit again. Bull knows better than to dismiss it wholesale — if D’s still thinking it, then it’s at least true for him — but he’s also not gonna stand by and watch D talk himself down. “You still manage to drag me into your weird ass dreams.”

D’s halfway through another line of his rant but it veers off midrail there, and he blinks owlishly up at Bull. “Excuse me?”

Bull shrugs. “The both of us know you’ve still got whatever powers you had before, even if you’re not using them to match people up with their destined murderer. Or animal soulmate thing.”

“How many times must I correct—”

Bull waves his hand at the closed door to the bedroom. “Do your thing.”

D narrows his eyes. “I am not some sideshow magician, here today to entertain you with parlor tricks.”

“Do I look entertained?” Before D can respond, ‘cuz it looks like he’s got a whole paragraph of words to lob at Bull, he forges ahead. “Fucking do it. Turn the room into a beach paradise. Turn it into a thousand acres of forest, and I’ll get lost in it.”

“You’re being childish.”

“I’m just trying to get you to see that you’re not any different than you were a year ago.”

“I am so different as to be _unrecognizable_ ,” D snarls in response, and freezes up, his eyes widening, his mouth snapping shut. He looks shocked at his own reaction.

It’s a shitty thing to think, but Bull’s kind of glad to see a glimpse of that balls-to-the-wall anger again.

D looks like he wants to do nothing else but disappear. There’s no shop for him to hide in anymore — he can’t slam one of the doors behind him and leave bull hanging out in the front room.

Except when Bull moves out of the way of the bedroom door and D stalks past him, slipping inside and — shit, yeah, Bull hears the lock thrown. He can’t say he doesn’t deserve that.

D needs to cool down and Bull gives him the time to do it, but five hours later D’s still in the room and Bull’s still locked out. He knocks all polite but doesn’t get a response. He knocks _less_ politely and gets nothing. The super’s not particularly fond of qunari so if Bull beats the door down that’s gonna be a load of money out a pocket, if not an eviction; and the hinges for the door are on the inside of the room.

He heads into the living room and turns the TV on too loud, three clicks over what D’s told him is inhumane, and waits 15 minutes before realizing D’s not gonna respond to that either.

So he calls Dalish, who tells Skinner, and pretty soon the three of them are standing outside the door to Bull’s bedroom while Skinner mutters under her breath and picks the lock. “Did you know,” she says, “that most people talk to each other about their fuck-ups and don’t bring their coworkers in to fix shit?”

Bull doesn’t talk back because — well, she’s not _wrong_.

“ _Voilà_ ,” Dalish says when the lock clicks under Skinner’s handiwork, and Skinner pushes the door open and—

The three of ‘em freeze where they’re standing.

“I thought we were trying to keep your super from evicting you,” Dalish says, and Bull drags a hand down his face. “Because this is—”

“Yeah, I’ve got it, _thanks_ ,” Bull responds, and maneuvers around them to head into the fucking jungle where his bedroom used to be.

“Ce que le baiser,” Skinner curses before Bull shuts the door in her face.

Bull wasn’t lying when he’d told D he’d get lost in whatever D conjured up. It’s thick jungle, vines and ferns and trees stretching high enough up that the sun filters down in patches if at all. It’s… it smells like home, is the thing. That if he keeps going, walks for a mile or two, he’ll end up on a beach, waves of the Boeric ocean crashing against the sand.

He doesn’t hear anything over the rustling of the wind, but he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts D’s name anyway. There’s no sudden burst of birds taking flight, no answering peal of monkeys’ shrieking.

It’s a good ten minutes later when he realizes that this isn’t anything like Seheron. There’re no animals at all, just heat and humidity and plants and water. The jungles he’d wander into as a kid were filled to the brim with wildlife, most of ‘em wanting nothing to do with him but still _there_.

Maybe the only wildlife in this jungle’s D, and unfortunately he doesn’t want anything to do with him right now either.

Bull knows it’s useless but he turns around anyway, just to know he’s well and truly fucking lost. He breathes in slow and continues trudging through the undergrowth.

==

He chills, sort of napping, at the base of a tree when the heat gets to him, and when he opens his eyes again the jungle’s darker — the sun’s setting.

D’s on a rock right in front of him, legs folded, hands on his knees. He looks as bent outta shape as somebody like him can look: his clothes look like they were just fucking pressed, and Bull knows _he_ looks like he just failed out of a triathalon. “I locked the door, Detective Hissrad. Most would consider that a request to be left alone.”

Bull gives him a smile. “Yeah, but I’m an asshole.”

D’s shoulders shake and then still, like he realized he shouldn’t laugh.

After a couple minutes of silence Bull sits down, wincing when his knee twinges: he’s gotta stop hustling up and down the stairs at the precinct. He rubs his palm into the side of his knee until D shifts in front of him. When Bull looks up D’s glaring again.

“Didn’t realize I’d be hiking today. Wore the wrong shoes.”

“And you think I _care_ ,” D snarls, and then frowns. He stares off into the distance, towards what last bits of sun can still be seen through the dense trees.

The words don’t hurt, even if D intended them to. D goes for the offensive when he can, and it’s nothing Bull hasn’t endured before.

Problem is, Bull’s gotten pretty good at defusing D’s attitude timebombs, but this time he’s mostly not sure what he can do to… well, fix any of this, or at least make D feel less shitty. There’s a bucket of things he could say to get D talking, but he doesn’t have a clue if any of it’d actually help with what D’s working through right now.

At least D can’t deny he’s still got this kind of magic in him.

Bull leans back on his hands and ignores the chill threatening to work its way over his skin. He remembers how quickly the temperature would drop in the jungle, once the sun set. “It’s gonna get cool real fast, if we stay here.”

D’s expression shifts from frustrated to thoughtful — his lips pursing, his brow smoothing out. Bull watches his tongue dart out between those lips before he says, “This is Tevinter as I remember it. Not Seheron.”

Bull shrugs. “Think we can agree that they’re not all that different at the end of the day.” He drops his head back, looking up through the canopy of leaves. He can’t see the sky.

He wonders if D could make the stars come out. How much they’d shine.

When he lets himself fall onto his back and closes his eyes, D lets out a little slip of concern — or protest, more likely, that Bull’s tucking himself in for the long haul. If they’re gonna be here all night though, Bull’s gonna get comfortable. He’ll freeze to death, probably, but at least he won’t get a crick in his neck.

“Don’t make your cold worse,” he reminds D, and D curses back in rapid-fire Tevene.

==

Bull wakes up in what’s gotta be the dead of night — probably because the jungle’s silence finally fucking got to him. He pushes himself up onto his ass and rubs sleep from his eyes, and he’s halfway to asking D if he’s ready to head back when he realizes D isn’t there anymore.

D’s not, shit, anywhere — or at least not in Bull’s field of vision.

He rubs his hands together to get his blood flowing. He swallows back the grunt of frustration he wants to let loose. He could get pissed, but there’s no point in blaming anybody. Bull invited himself in. Seems like D’s hissyfit would’ve gone the same way, with Bull here or not.

The sudden burst of annoyance threaded through with liberal chunks of concern beating at Bull’s skull don’t seem to care about whose fault whatever is though, or how Bull or D got here.

He curses under his breath and clambers to his feet. This is as obvious a _go away_ as D’s gonna give him, he reckons.

He rolls his shoulders and ignores the darts of pain ricocheting down his back. He’s not young enough to sleep on the ground anymore turns out — D would probably have something to snap about that, Bull taking care of himself. But then D’s fucked off, so.

Bull pushes away the beginnings of bitterness — D didn’t want to be followed from the get-go, he reminds himself — and tries to get oriented. He starts off in the direction he’s pretty sure he came from, and is rewarded when he passes a tree he remembers, clusters of beige-y mushrooms growing from the trunk.

_Shit_ , he thinks, and feels kinda awed, that D can make something real enough there are ecosystems.

No animals, though. He doesn’t have access to them anymore.

==

An hour into his hike, he can feel the dehydration setting in — his mouth dry, his head starting to pound in time with every step he takes. He didn’t walk this far the first time. He can’t be _that_ far from the door. He was sure he was headed the right way, but it’s not like D doesn’t have a thing for mindgames.

He rests a hand against the closest tree, leaning on it for a while. Detective Bull Hissrad, Val Royeaux’s finest, done in by his witchy boyfriend’s weird magical sulk.

He ends up napping again — it’s hot as fuck and he’s sweating out what little water he’s got left. When he jerks awake, he feels the humidity, the heat pulsing from the earth below him, from the tree against his back. There’s a wind whipping across his face and it grips his heart tight, the same rushing and whistling that always accompanied a mortar dropping — the crack of splintering trees and the ground shifting beneath his feet.

He grabs for something to steady himself, gets his hands on a swath of hanging vines, and he tries to swallow around his heart in his throat, tries to determine the best direction to run, which is safest, and then he remembers—

When he pays attention what’s actually in front of him, what’s causing the wind and the trees breaking, he knows he must still be dreaming.

There should be a cap in a guy’s life, on how many times he can look straight ahead and think, rationally, _that’s a dragon_.

It ain’t Vita. Lack of heads, for one thing, and it’s bigger than she was anyway. Sweet fuck, is it bigger, and a lot spikier besides.

He swallows. Takes in a slow breath. Tries to decide if it’s worth running, if this _isn’t_ a dream. The dragon doesn’t look like it’s considering eating him, after all; maybe bat him around a bit, like a cat with a toy.

The dragon stares him down for long minutes, and then it rears its head back and lets loose a sound like an exploding gas tank. A sneeze.

Bull wonders if this is what going mad feels like.

“Uh.” Bull licks his lips. “D?”

The dragon resettles itself, drawing one of its massive sets of claws across its chest like it’s brushing something off. It — he, Andraste’s pretty tits, _he_ narrows his eyes at Bull, and Bull feels the same freaky uncertainty he did upon waking.

It’s not like D’s made it much of a secret. But mysterious hints doused in as much Tevinter charm as D could muster aren’t exactly… _seeing it_.

Bull sits down.

D narrows his eyes — big eyes, big as Bull’s head, _fucking shit_ — and starts to look all shimmery, the same trick Bull knows from bizarre experience means he’s going to shift back to human, but Bull’s not. That is.

“No, listen, let me—.” He swallows.

D goes back to solid.

Bull tries to take him in. However a guy’s supposed to take in… fuck, two dragons in one lifetime when dragons are, y’know, extinct, is more than a guy should be expected to deal with.

He tells D — D the dragon, D the guy who keeps stealing Bull’s tea and complaining about the mediocre leaves — about the injustice of this situation, and the skin pulls back from D’s massive, forearm-long teeth, like D’s grimacing.

Or smiling maybe?

“Technically, Detective Hissrad,” D rumbles, his voice the same timbre but infinitely _more_ , like he swallowed a subwoofer, “you’ve seen three.”

Now is _really_ not the time to talk about D’s dead dad.

Every instinct Bull still carries around from millennia of evolution’s telling him to turn the fuck around and skedaddle, but he stays rooted where he is — stands up and takes a step forward, even. He wants. He lifts his hand and reaches out, palm spread, and D doesn’t move back, but does narrow his eyes like he’s waiting for Bull to make a wrong move and, shit, gobble him up or something.

Ha, gobble him up. Hot.

Bull pulls his hand back and drags it down his face. This really isn’t the time to think about _that_ , either.

D sniffs and settles himself more comfortably, and when Bull looks back at him he looks… okay. Good, even. Like he’s finally scratched an itch he hasn’t been able to reach in half a year.

Bull swallows. “You used to change like this in the shop, huh.”

“It wasn’t as though there were another location I could do so.”

Bull laughs softly, dropping his hand to the side. Guy’s been going crazy because he thought he couldn’t have this. Maybe he thought.... “Hey, D.”

D lifts one of his impressive brows, and Bull catches a glimpse of the forked tongue running over his bottom — lip? Mandible? _Focus_.

“Nobody expects you to be miserable.”

D’s silent for half a second, and then he laughs, throwing his head back like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

Bull feels powerfully, incandescently sad. Muscles through it. Says, “Shit, then I don’t expect you to be miserable.”

D’s head floats closer and Bull has to concentrate on standing firm, on not letting the tiny voice in the back of his head get him to wince. D stares at him with one wide eye and then drops his head, nudging up against Bull’s side like he was a massive horse. Bull lets out the breath he hadn’t been sure he was holding and rests a hand against the cool scales of D’s brow.

“We should do this more often,” D says, his voice attempting soft, quiet, but shuddering through Bull’s frame anyway.

“Okay,” Bull says easily, and he doesn’t know if he’s agreeing to the wandering a massive jungle thing, or the cuddling with something that could literally snap him in half thing, or the letting D be himself thing.

“Okay,” Bull says again, and draws his thumb across the ridges of D’s scales.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> even typing out "self-esteem" made my inner self shriek NO, [SELF- _COMPASSION_](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-self-compassion-works-better-than-self-esteem/481473/) but y'know, you do what you gotta do. ~~katy are you married to a mental health therapist WHYEVER WOULD YOU THINK THAT~~
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoyed. i'd love to hear from you below or over on [ye olde tumblr](http://amurderof.tumblr.com/ask), if you did.


	5. self-actualization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE. thanks for reading, loves. :)

“Hello.”

Bull lurches up in bed, hand grabbing for the — fuck, D moved the gun from the side table, all he’s got in the drawer is socks and condoms, what’s he gonna do with _those_ , shit—

“You’re not awake.”

Bull hesitates.

He opens his eyes.

He’s not in bed, either. He’s sitting on his ass on the deck of a ship he never thought he’d see again, and across from him Vita’s sitting forward on her haunches like she’s been expecting him and he’s both late and an asshole.

“Uh,” he says intelligently, and clears his throat. He forces himself upright and brushes his ass off. “If you were gonna, uh. D’you think I could have some pants?”

Vita’s four heads stare straight at him for a long moment, before Cadash ruins the effect by ducking and giggling.

“You don’t got anything we haven’t seen, chief,” Trevelyan tells Bull, and Bull wipes his hands across his eyes. Wonders if there’s even the remotest possibility he could just go back to sleep instead of engaging in whatever this fucking dragon has planned for him.

Unlikely.

He drops his hands to his sides and figures he may as well get it over with. “So is this… I figure you’ve got a reason for this?”

“Yes,” Vita says, and Bull feels the wood beneath his bare feet begin to warp.

==

D’s a kid.

Bull’s standing in a fancy ass library, shelves full up of books with leather cases and gold leaf, plush red carpet thick under his feet.

And D’s a kid.

He looks maybe ten, but Bull doesn’t know how ancient fuckers age — D looks thirty now, maybe, but Bull’s picked up on the truth of it: he’s been alive for centuries.

But now, now D’s a kid, baby-faced and missing most of his spangles: his ears pierced with simple studs, no rings on his fingers. He sits cross-legged at a low desk, books splayed out in front of him, and Bull’s hit with a jolt of affection.

He’s cradling the book he’s in the middle of, and he runs his fingers down the page as he reads, to keep his place. Every once in a while he spreads his palm flat over a page, like he’s feeling the grain of the paper, the dried ink.

What a nerd, Bull thinks, fondly.

D sits up straight suddenly, like somebody ran their knuckle down his spine, and the door to the library opens softly. A man Bull’s only seen once — and then when things were enough of a shitshow he didn’t get a lot of time to take him in — enters the room and folds himself onto the floor across the desk from D.

He’s not big on the same style as D is as an adult, but his clothing’s still nice, heavy silk brocade embroidered with tendrils of fire and smoke. Not subtle, this family. _That’s_ something D’s got in spades.

“Tell me what you’ve read.”

His manner’s academic, like this is a lecture at UVR and D’s been called to the front to prove he’s been doing his homework.

D doesn’t touch the book in front of him. He keeps his hands folded politely in his lap and inclines his head when he speaks, respectful or intimidated.

Bull remembers his tama standing in front of him, arms crossed, until he answered her questions to a degree she was satisfied with.

D says, “It’s fascinating, Father,” and then slides into a rapid description of the book, of politics and the people within Tevinter’s borders, of invaders from the north and south, of humanity. It’s obvious he’s excited about it — it spills into all his words, gets him waving his hands by the end of it.

His father’s expression barely changes — his stern brow softening, the line of his mouth curving just enough to suggest warmth. When D peters off, he takes the book from him and reads over the open pages, his eyes moving quickly.

“They’re interesting, aren’t they,” he says, and D’s response is a firm nod and the beginnings of a reply. His father lifts his hand, palm out, and D stays silent. “You mustn’t let them trick you.”

D frowns. He swallows, and lowers his eyes to the book in his father’s hands.

Bull watches the man’s face fall — the twist of his lips, the crease in his brow. D doesn’t see it. When D looks back up, his father’s expression is reserved.

“They’re dangerous,” D says, and his father nods firmly, once. “I know, Father.”

“Your mother would be proud of you,” his father tells him, and D ducks his head. His hands tighten into fists on his lap. Bull can’t tell if the statement’s made him happy or upset him.

D’s father pushes himself to his feet and the room seems to shift — like somebody’s decided they didn’t like the scenery, and started wiping it off like it was a filthy kitchen counter.

“Vita, the _fuck_ kind of historical merry-go-round is this?” Bull bites out, and he feels a presence behind him, a firm bump like some dragon just tapped one of its heads against his shoulder.

“Just observe, dumbfuck,” Adaar snaps, and Bull laughs humorlessly as another room settles around him.

It’s dark — the middle of the night, moonlight leaking through the lacy curtains.

It’s a bedroom. There’s a kerosene lamp on the wall giving off enough light to illuminate the faces of the — the mother and son sitting on the bed, her hand slowly carding through his hair.

D’s younger than he was before. He lies against his mother’s side, hands in front of him, palms open and fingers spread. When sparks flicker from his fingertips Bull takes a step back, and D’s mom titters and tugs at one of his curls gently.

“Again, love.”

The sparks die out and D bites down on his bottom lip and narrows his eyes. The sparks are red this time, like fireworks, and she _oohs_ appropriately at the change.

D drops his hands to his lap and frowns, a weird reaction to his mom’s encouragement. “Magic’s good,” he starts, uncertain. She waits for him to finish. “But where our magic comes from isn’t.”

She clacks her tongue at him, pinching his cheek. “Nonsense.”

“But if—”

“The foolishness of a mortal can be outlasted. We’re not ashamed of who we are. Are you ashamed?”

D shakes his head.

“Neither am I.” She holds her hand in front of them both and summons sparks, the same color as D’s. “But we are all of us cautious.”

The scenes — it feels like Bull’s watching a movie, some fucking nonlinear art film like the ones Lace drags them to ever year at VRFF — bleed into each other after that, a series of captured moments in time. D’s continued education, alone or with his parents. Eventually his mom stops showing up, and the vast expanse of their home is darker, quieter. D’s barely an adult when his dad offers the option to emigrate, to get out of Tevinter. Kid’s been raised to keep his emotions close to the vest, but even he can’t swallow back the swarm of shit that swings at him.

Bull recognizes it, the way D holds himself still, processing everything instead of letting himself feel it outright.

His dad’s reassuring. D’s concerned to leave him by himself.

When he’s alone though, D’s fucking over the moon to be given the task — Bull’s gotta remind himself the whole venture involved people ending up _dead_ , with how the pleased smile on D’s face warms his heart.

D finds the box containing the snake in his possessions after he leaves. Sees it as a gift. He’s just a kid. Real trusting.

The last room Vita ends up showing him is one he recognizes — that weird ass room in the shop where he saw Vita in all her pants-shitting glory for the first time, when D’d told him to leave and then disappeared himself.

Bull’s not sure it’s before he’s arrived or after he was kicked out until Vita pushes away from D and tumbles into Lavellan, face twisted into a scowl. “You don’t have to be a chickenshit,” she snaps, and the lines of her form blur, like the others are fighting with her for the body.

“ _Vita_.” D glowers at her but doesn’t try to argue. The snake hisses something to him and he firms his jaw, then stands. “That behavior doesn’t suit you.”

Lavellan snorts and turns her back on him, and D stares at her until the snake finally wrenches his attention back.

D leaves the room and pauses. He leans against the door and raises a hand to his face, palm curled against his chin. The snake’s chewing him out, far as Bull can tell.

“I know,” D says, and his hand slides from his chin to cover his eyes. “Yes. _Yes_ , I understand.” The snake tightens around his wrist and D laughs, the sound harsh in the quiet of the hallway.

He stands straight and the door behind him wavers, the frame dissolving into the walls. He walks further into the shop and the doors on either side of the hallway do the same, fading into dark wallpaper.

Bull waits for the scene to change again but nothing happens — he glances back for Vita but she’s gone. What is behind him now is the end of the hallway, which… wasn’t there before. He starts after D, and when he glances over his shoulder the hallway continues to collapse behind him, the structure moving like it was built to shift, like a giant hand’s on the other side of the wall pushing it forward.

D eventually steps through a door and they’re in the parlor. Bull watches the door they stepped through evaporate behind him.

D’s arguing with the snake, walking about the parlor and picking up and then putting down tchotchkes, his voice colored with the kind of frustration Bull recognizes from when he’d gotten shot. “When we last moved, it was because Rialto had become inhospitable.”

The snake slides up D’s arm to coil around his neck, comfortable. D watches it move, as much he can, and then he stills in his erratic pacing. His lips part, and his eyes unfocus. “I know. We’ve... done what needed to be done here. We’ve punished those who deserved it. Rewarded the few who deserved it.

“We’re not being driven away.”

The snake hisses, the sound long and grating, and D shakes his head, blinking rapidly.

Bull wants to reach out and pull the snake apart.

“But how did I not know — a _simple spell_ was all that was needed, to bring us back. Why did Father never…?”

The snake remains silent, and D pets it slowly with one finger, gently, absentmindedly.

“Or is it that something with me has changed, to allow this to occur?”

The snake fucking snarls.

“No. _No_ , he’s not…”

D doesn’t finish the thought. Bull wants to reach out to him, move in close and smooth his fingers over the lines furrowing D’s forehead. Wants to cradle his hands and let him know it’s okay to be pissed, or sad, or _whatever_ , but that he doesn’t have to be.

“Would it be so terrible? If he were?” D asks, voice young, small, especially when compared to the hissing snake on his arm.

“Vita,” Bull growls, because — this isn’t his to see. D doesn’t let himself look this lost when he’s around people. D didn’t look this lost when Bull was lying in that damned hospital bed.

D stands still, listening to the snake spit counsel at him, before breathing in once, deeply, and nodding. “Yes. Of course. Yes, we’ll go. I’ll summon transport, collect my things.”

He picks up one of the books stacked on the coffee table — and hesitates. He sets the book down on the sofa and kneels, drawing the next book in the stack into his lap.

It’s the book Bull got for him.

He runs his hand slowly across the cover — reverently, if Bull had to describe it.

This, more than anything, lets Bull know like he’s intruding. Even when his surroundings blend together again and he’s left standing on the deck of the boat, he feels the discomfort churning his gut, sharp at the base of his skull.

“That wasn’t — right,” Bull heaves around what feel like stones in his throat. Heavy. Blocking the air to his lungs. “You shouldn’t have shown me that.”

Vita hums, the sound coming at Bull from all directions. Cadash’s head brushes against his cheek. Lavellan near snarls into his other ear, “He’d never tell you any of this shit directly.”

“That wasn’t yours to show,” Bull insists, and he feels behind him for the railing of the ship, slumping back once his hand hits wood.

==

When Bull opens his eyes next morning, he’s still tired.

Bad dreams. No, too many dreams that were more like being awake. Too many dreams of things he shouldn’t have seen. There’s a weight on his chest. It’s almost hard to swallow.

He sits up when the door to the bedroom opens, D walking in with a tray of tea and those little butter cookies he eats by the box. There are too many words fighting to get outta Bull’s mouth, that none of them make it. He has to center himself, has to focus on breathing, and when he finally gets out, “D—”

— D smoothly interrupts him: “What did she show you?”

Bull sits back against the headboard and opens his mouth a couple times. He takes one of the mugs of tea from D because D hands it to him, and what else is he supposed to do. “You…”

D blinks languidly, sipping his own tea. “She spoke with you last night, didn’t she?”

“The fuck kind of double team was this.” Bull starts to sink down on the bed, then abruptly stopping when he realizes he’s close to spilling hot tea all over himself. “The fuck, D.”

D purses his lips, and places his mug on the tray on the bedside table. He looks at the corner of the mattress, one of his thoughtful looks on his face. “It wasn’t my intention to upset you. It was a straightforward way to educate you.” He frowns then, and twines his fingers together on his lap. “That came out insulting.”

“Patronizing,” Bull suggests, and D huffs a laugh and nods.

“There are things in my life I don’t… that I am unsure of how to explain. I’ve… become reacquainted with Vita, since our separation.”

Bull drags a thumb across his forehead. “Could’ve told me about that.”

D’s frown curls into a smile, small but real, and he glances up from the bed. “I could have, yes. But I wanted to talk with her on my terms. You have quite a… varied relationship with her.”

Funny way to describe how much of a dick Vita could be, Bull thinks, but doesn’t say anything to ruin the quietly hopeful expression on D’s pretty face. “So you talked to Vita and decided to fuck with my head again?”

D rolls his eyes, and his expression slides into the cool mask Bull’s more used to seeing. “I knew I did you a disservice, expecting your _buy-in_ without providing you with my own history. I know much of your life. I wanted you to know of mine. I wouldn’t have...” He frowns. He draws his lower lip between his teeth. “Unfortunately, such conversations are not my forte. I had intended it to be useful.”

Bull laughs, breathlessly. It’s hard to be put out when D’s so fucking… D about everything. Coming up with a way to justify murdering assholes? That’s the kind of shit of thing you get done before brunch — but telling your boyfriend about your mom and your fucked up relationship with your dad needs an embossed invitation and a mediator.

D narrows his eyes, but there’s a smile behind the look, controlled relief. “Then you’re amused, rather than angry.”

Bull drinks his damn tea.

==

D sprawls in his sleep, arms and legs stretched out from his sides and strewn across Bull like he’s a particularly lumpy part of the mattress.

D’s always been coldblooded, toes fucking icicles against Bull’s shins, but Bull’s also used to a distinctly smoother stretch of skin under his hands, plastered against his side. He’s not used to what he gets instead, D’s shoulder blades callused under Bull’s hands.

D’s big on pampering himself — Bull’s never seen an inch of him that wasn’t soft and pretty — and so he cracks open an eye and freezes, hand mid-graze down D’s reptilian back. Reptilian? Draconic.

_Draconic_.

Bull gives himself half a minute to fucking lose his mind about this, to really consider the fact he’s got some kind of shapeshifting supernatural ancient god in his bed, who’s decided today he’s going to wear a third skin, one Bull’s not seen yet.

What the fuck else can D shift into?

D lets loose a sound halfway between his normal voice and the shuddering depth of what he puts out when he’s full-on mystical being of legend, and look, Bull’s only a man, all right?

D pushes himself up, hands on either side of Bull’s chest. His eyes are a ruddy gold. His skin shimmers, reflecting what little light’s streaming in through the shitty bedroom curtains. His hair’s a mess of color. Bull’s afraid to blink, like D’s going to disappear — or change back, go full-human — if he does.

“Good morning,” D rumbles, and Bull breathes in shakily. He slides his hand up D’s back — cool, ridged in places, like the beginnings of spines — and wraps the loose curls of D’s kaleidoscope hair around his fingers.

He says, “This is new,” and D’s response is a resonant laugh, vibrating Bull’s chest.

“It’s been many years since I was so comfortable as to allow myself the satisfaction of shifting at my pleasure.”

_Pleasure_ comes outta his mouth like a moan, and this close Bull can see the sharp edges of his teeth, and the length of his tongue coiling in his mouth.

“Oh,” Bull says, intelligently.

D grins at him. His tongue uncurls to glide along the bottom of his teeth. Bull has a sudden, visceral vision as to what that tongue could get up to.

“Clean your teeth,” D commands, rolling off of Bull and stretching out along the bed next to him, hands stretching up towards the headboard. His nails are longer. Thicker.

They’d really tear up his back, Bull thinks.

“Right,” he says, and hauls ass to the bathroom.

==

The room’s darker when he gets back. Darker and… Bull squints, and can’t find the walls. It’s like they’ve been pushed out, the bedroom now some kind of great hall. The bed’s clear as day though, with D sprawled across it like he owns it.

Bull runs his tongue across his teeth — D’s not a fan of mint toothpaste, but it’s better than morning breath.

On the bed, D bends a knee, and the sheet he insists on sleeping with even when it’s balls hot slides off the length of his leg, pooling just below his hips.

Bull swallows and wipes his palms against his shorts.

“Are you bothered now?” D asks, tone haughty, but Bull knows the look on his face — knows that he’s trying for unaffected, for the level of disaffection he wore like one of his pretty outfits not a year ago. Bull knows it’s an honest question, under all those layers of posturing. “Unnerved, Detective Hissrad?”

Bull crosses the room and doesn’t hesitate at the side of the bed, climbing back up and reaching for D. D’s eyes widen, but he lets Bull take his hand and lift it to his lips.

Bull kisses his knuckles, dainty-like, and watches the shift of scales across D’s face — how they seem to ruffle then resettle. “Not gonna say it’s not gonna take some getting used to,” Bull says, and before D can work up a glare continues with, “but it’s pretty hot.”

“I have been known to breathe fire,” D says agreeably, and Bull’s fucking smitten.

“Think I can get you to burn the complex down?” he asks, only half-kidding, and D blinks slowly at him before letting out a husky laugh, tipping his head back. Bull stares at the long line of his throat and moves forward in a rush, and D’s laughter catches and slides into a moan, long and low and vibrating through Bull’s own chest like a heavy bassline.

D latches onto Bull’s shoulder with one of those taloned hands, and Bull bites down on D’s neck when he feels the first prick of claws in his skin.

==

D's skin — his scales — seem to flex under Bull's touch, rippling with every slide of his hands. D's propped himself up on his elbows, his chin tipped to his chest, and his eyes are half-lidded but aware, following Bull's face. It's more of a show this time. D getting off on what Bull's doing, and watching Bull do it.

"D'you bruise like this?" Bull asks, going for nonchalant, and when D's eyes narrow Bull shoots him a quick grin and presses his fingers deep into the meat of D's hips. Bull mouths at the point D's skin smooths out, the junction between his leg and groin, and moves one of his hands to curl around the thickness of his thigh.

D's hips cant up against Bull's chin, and Bull laughs as he turns his face towards D's pretty cock, colored like the rest of him, a cycling green and gold. He licks at the side of it, the texture just this side of strange, like leather under his tongue.

Fuck. He has to close his eyes, breathing hot against D's cock.

"Bull," D starts, the word strained, and the air in Bull's lungs feels punched out of his chest.

"You're absolutely gonna fuck me with this," Bull explains, and D stares at him before his head tips back on a laugh.

Bull slides his hand on D's hip in, to brush his fingers against D's cock. "This's no laughing matter. I'm serious."

"I imagine you are," D replies in between what Bull's convinced are barely-restrained giggles. "I imagine you'd be equally serious were I to shift completely."

Bull's hands twitch on D, and his mouth goes dry.

D stops laughing. He lifts his head and eyes him. Whatever he's seeing on Bull's face must be something he likes. He licks his bottom lip and sits up completely, fitting between Bull's horns.

He places his hands on Bull's shoulders and curves his nails into Bull's skin, near the long marks he’s already made there. It's hard to hold his gaze, bodies bent like they are. Bull knows D's got an answer to that unasked question besides, so he presses his shoulders into D's sharp grip and drops his head to take D's cock into his mouth.

"It would appeal to you," D says, word firm like he's taking the extra effort to not stutter them out. "That. Me."

Bull replaces his mouth with his closed fist and breathes hot against D's stomach. "Yeah. You appeal to me."

D's cock leaps in Bull's hand. His nails catch in Bull's back.

“You enjoy the time it takes to prepare me. How long, do you think, would it take to prepare you?”

“Merciful fuck.”

“I doubt it,” D replies sweetly, and Bull hisses and swallows D’s cock down.

==

“Detective Hissrad,” D whispers later, his mouth hovering over Bull’s, his breath hot against Bull’s lips. “Bull.” His hands weigh heavy on either side of Bull’s neck. A thumb presses into Bull’s pulse point.

Bull keeps his eyes open, cross-eyed at the distance, D’s face taking up his entire field of vision.

They hadn’t taken their time, Bull gone enough on the conversation that when D had bared his teeth — sharp and lengthening as Bull watched — he’d lasted over a minute, maybe, with that mouth on his dick. Dangerous and dear, in equal measure. Shit.

“Yeah, D?”

“Dorian.”

Bull breathes in.

“It’s — call me Dorian.”

The air catches in Bull’s throat.

“Hey, Dorian.”

Dorian’s smile stretches across his face, until his eyes crinkle. He presses his forehead to Bull’s, and Bull closes his eyes.

“Hello, amatus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh thank you so much for reading this continuation. there may be eventual additions to the series (who knows, maybe i'll one day actually write Dragon Sex), but this is the conclusion of this bit of it all.
> 
> i'd love to hear from you either in a comment below, or over on [ye olde tumblr](http://amurderof.tumblr.com/ask). thank you!!


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